US firm to launch four more Dove satellites with ISRO

Sunday, December 03, 2017
By: The Hindu Business Line
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Aerospace and satellite company Planet, which saw a record 88 of its Dove satellites launched by ISRO’s PSLV at one go in February this year, plans to launch four more later this year.

The San Francisco-based satellite company, which provides data for commercial use, is looking to expand its presence in the global marketplace.

Karthik Govindhasamy, Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice-President - Engineering, said the company has more than 200 micro satellites in space, of which about 100 have been launched by ISRO.

“With such a large presence, we are planning to add four more later this year. This will enable us to offer satellite-based information to customers, both government and private, for use in surveillance and other applications such as monitoring and agriculture,” he told BusinessLine.

The CTO said the global satellite-based data analytics business is estimated to be worth over $9 trillion and its applications are in a number of sectors.

“As a company which designs, develops and makes satellites, we have made a mark with small satellites that do the work of large satellites and can be developed at a fraction of the total cost of large satellites. These are solar powered and go on and on,” he said.

The company sees data from satellite imagery having potential to create a number of next-generation entrepreneurs who would be able to use the data for new businesses.

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